The Magnificent West Poem by Patrick O'Reilly

They are magnificent in the west
In six-digit houses
Smiling with silver and gold in their mouths
Milk and honey flowing in rivers
And dollar bills dropping off tangly vines
Where oil runs like molasses
Or blood through the veins and arteries of all life
Where smokestacks and refineries tower over the boomtowns
And the drugs are cheap and plentiful
That is the gold-gilded edge of the civilized world
Where the money pounds in waves against the rocky dam
And collects in pools deep enough to drown in

And drown they must